The Long Bird Story

On Wednesday afternoon Nate and Bonnie came home from school with a young bird that they had found in the park. They were sure that it had fallen out of its nest and was going to die, therefore they brought it to me in the hopes that I would know what to do. This is when my all-knowingness as a mom failed me. We found a box, filled it with shredded papers, and put the bird in it. Bonnie begged me to please take it to the vet because she was sure that its wing was broken. Now I like animals just as well as the next person, but I was not willing to pay the cost to take a random stray bird to the vet, especially when I could tell that its wing was folding just fine. I called my older sister Bet and asked her for advice. After telling her that the bird was a dove she looked it up online (yes I realize I should have thought of that) and found out that this type of bird leaves the nest at about 2 weeks old. It can't fly yet, but it explores its surroundings and the best thing for it is to be back where it was so it can get back to its nest. I informed Nate and Bonnie of the findings and told them that when they were done with their homework and piano practice they would need to return the bird to the park where they found it. Bonnie immediatly burst into tears and cried the whole time she was practicing piano. (I should have taken a video of it as it is really quite funny to think about now, but was not so funny to me at the time.)

Well, it took them over half an hour and 4 trips back and forth to the park to finally leave the bird under a bush where they had found it. Each of these trips caused more tears on the part of Bonnie who first needed a picture with the bird, then was worried because the wind was blowing its feathers, and then was further traumatized because, "When we set it down it didn't move anywhere and I just couldn't bear to leave it." Finally I convinced them to leave the bird under a bush and walked back to our house with 2 sobbing children, who continued to cry for another 1/2 hour after they got home. Unfortunately (for the babysitter) I had to leave them with a babysitter to go help at scouts and she got to deal with the last part of it. She was a really good sport.

Notice Bonnie's red-rimmed eyes.

I wish that I could tell you that was the end of the story, but sadly it continued into the next two days. On Thursday Bonnie woke up and immediately asked me if we could walk to school through the park and check on Lightning (yes they had given it a name). Now I may not know what to do with a live bird, but I do know that after all the tears the night before I was not going to risk them finding a dead bird at the park on the way to school, therefore I promised to check on the bird after I dropped them off at school. Well, I could honestly tell them that the bird was not where they had left it and that it must have made its way home (eternally). Not two yards from where they left poor Lightning was a very dead bird. I had a little bit of guilt, but I think the several trips to and from our house did not do it any good if it was alright in the first place. Needless to say I got my neighbor to watch Gwen for 5 minutes while I went to the park and disposed of the bird.

Nate and Bonnie came home yesterday afternoon very happy that they had not found Lightning at the park. They were sure that he had made it home, and I did not disagree with them. Everybody was happy.

I am sorry to tell you that today, Friday, Nate and Bonnie came home from school again in tears. On the way home from school they had found a dead bird in the park that looked just like Lightning. Of all the luck. With all I had gone through to make sure they didn't find the real bird another one just like it would die in the same park. I did finally convince them that it was not their bird by telling them that there are a lot of those types of birds around and just last week there had been one like it that had died in our yard. For some reason telling them of other dead birds seemed to do the trick. Bonnie decided that it must have been one of Lightning's siblings and that was okay. Thankfully everyone is now happy again and they do not know how to get on our blog to read this story. Someday when they have kids I hope this comes back around to them.